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Cordcutter News Brief - The most popular shows on Sling TV; Philo launches on Android TV; T-Mobile scrapping plan to offer TV service this year; CBSN is going local; and more

December 21, 2018 - 19:00 -- RokuGuide

In this week's collection of recent cord-cutting news items from around the web: Streaming services produced more scripted series than broadcast networks this year; the most popular shows on Sling TV; Philo launches on Android TV; T-Mobile is scrapping plan to offer TV service this year; Amazon and Hulu have the most overlap on films, Amazon and Netflix on TV; CBSN is going local; Sling, ESPN, Fox Now on Oculus Go; and more!

Sling announced this week that they are "the first virtual multichannel video programming distributor (vMVPD) to launch on Oculus Go, the all-in-one wireless virtual reality (VR) headset." Sling claims that watching on Oculus Go is equivalent to watching on a 180-inch television. Also available, https://www.vrfocus.com/2018/12/sling-tv-espn-and-fox-now-arrive-on-oculus-go-for-us-customers/according to VR/focus, are the ESPN family of channels and the Fox Now service.

Also from Sling TV, Deadline Hollywood reports that the skinny-bundle TV service has revealed the most popular shows, movies and live events of 2018 among its subscribers. "Fixer Upper, the wildly popular Chip and Joanna Gaines series that has just wrapped up its run on HGTV, topped the series list. It edged The Big Bang Theory, Family Guy, House Hunters and Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, in order... The ranking of top movie rentals was topped by The Incredibles, whose sequel proved a major 2018 hit, followed by Black Panther and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. In terms of overall movie viewing, Jurassic World and Step Brothers grabbed the top two spots."

Multichannel news reports that "Philo has announced its deployment on Android TV, Google's fast-growing OTT platform... Meanwhile, San Francisco-based start-up Philo has made a number of changes to its Apple apps. For iOS, which runs on iPhones and iPads, the virtual MVPD has added new navigation features, as well as the ability to create user profiles. And for Apple TV, Philo has launched a new guide experience it says improves navigation and discovery."

Providing examples like a new streaming outlet for golf from Discovery, Inc., and Fox News Channel's Fox Nation, Variety says that "[b]ehind the impetus for some – not all – of the glitzy new services is a gloomy old problem: As media companies work to build new connections through broadband streaming, they continue to lose links to consumers via cable and satellite subscriptions... To make up for the subscriber shortages, the industry is working to create a swarm of new Netflixes – and fast."

According to Bloomberg, "T-Mobile US Inc. is delaying the debut of its much-anticipated video service after the project proved more complex than expected, according to people familiar with the situation... T-Mobile executives faced the difficult choice of either offering a garden-variety streaming platform -- a service that lets customers watch cable channels and other content online -- or waiting until next year to deliver a more groundbreaking product, the people said."

Another PC Magazine reports on a comparison by Reelgood.com on the content libraries of Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and Hulu. Reelgood.com "found very little overlap. Only seven movies can be found on all three services, but a full 47 TV series are on all three." Going into more detail, PC says "On the day Reelgood looked, of the 12,764 movies on Amazon Video - and that's just the films included with a Prime account for "free" — a full 530 were also available on Hulu. That's almost one-third of Hulu's movie library. 277 of the Amazon selection were also on Netflix. The numbers dwindle more when you compare Hulu and Netflix: only 52 films in common. And across all three services, only seven films were available on each."

According to Digiday, "CBS Television Stations and the company's digital arm, CBS Interactive, launched CBSN New York, a 24-hour streaming video channel offering local live and on-demand news coverage across different connected streaming devices. This is the first of several local streaming video channels CBS plans to launch in 2019, including one for Los Angeles and a third channel in an unnamed market."

"The entertainment industry this year produced a record 495 original scripted TV shows, fueled by a surge in programming from Netflix and other streaming services that for the first time made up the largest category of programming, according to an industry report," according to a Los Angeles Time article. "There were 160 original scripted programs (not counting reality shows or kids programs) produced this year for digital services, including Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime. That compared with 146 shows for the broadcast networks — ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and the CW — according to a survey released Thursday by FX Networks Research."

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